Mobile robotics research advances through developments in theory, and implementation in hardware and software. While theory is important, this article is primarily concerned with hardware and software technologies. It is our view that significant strides can be made just be combining existing hardware and software tools. Thus the focus of this paper is answering the question: how can we more easily integrate robotic technologies?
We argue that the most effective approach is through standardized interfaces (APIs) to robotic hardware and software technologies (e.g., path planning toolkits). JavaBots is an example framework that provides this kind of integration in simulation and on robot ahrdware. A high-level common interface to sensors and actuators allows control systems to run on multiple simulated and real hardware platforms. Conversely, JavaBots supports the evaluation of competing control systems on the same hardware. In this article, we describe JavaBots and provide examples of robot systems built using it.
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